Hi, I’m a WordPress developer and I sell themes on ThemeForest.
I would like to purchase a developer license to integrate ACF PRO into my themes.
Is there a way to automatically distribute ACF PRO licenses each time someone buys the theme?
Thanks
No. You won’t find information on doing this as it is against the Rules given by ACF https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/including-acf-in-a-plugin-theme/
Disclaimer, I am not part of ACF, I just help out here on this forum, so my opinions may not be those of the ACF developer.
The way that it should work is that you have the license and you update the theme and then provide updates to the people that buy your theme.
I don’t know how others are doing it. I don’t sell themes because in the US this requires sales tax and the sales tax system in the US sucks. I make my money by doing consulting/custom coding, which is not taxable.
This is a personal opinion, but I would never include a plugin bundled in a theme. This is where I may disagree with ACF. I feel that bundling plugins in themes is overall a bad idea. The themes that we have purchased for clients that include plugins usually install those plugins and then we need to register them separately. The only thing that I dislike about this is that there is nothing in the theme description that says “Oh, by the way, you’re going to have to buy licenses for these 6 plugins and that’s going to cost you more than you’re paying for this theme, and your going to have to pay that every year.” At least with ACF it’s a one time cost and that cost in minimal.
On the other hand, if you don’t plan on supplying updates to the people that buy your themes then you really don’t need to supply a license for ACF since the ACF license is strictly for updates. If you don’t plan on updating the theme then updating ACF is probably a bad idea anyway. ACF does occasionally release updates that can break existing code, not often, but it has been know to happen. I still have several sites that I have to fix before I can update them to 5.7.X because of the new JS API.
Thank your very much for your answer.
“The only thing that I dislike about this is that there is nothing in the theme description that says “Oh, by the way, you’re going to have to buy licenses for these 6 plugins and that’s going to cost you more than you’re paying for this theme, and your going to have to pay that every year.”
All plugins included in the themes are either free or paid but included with a lifetime license. I’ve never seen a theme on sale (at least on ThemeForest) that required you to pay an additional plugin to make the theme work properly.
Also, I don’t understand this :
“On the other hand, if you don’t plan on supplying updates to the people that buy your themes then you really don’t need to supply a license for ACF since the ACF license is strictly for updates.”
This means that by buying a developer license, I can include the plugin in the theme, but the customer won’t be able to update the plugin, right?
